Welcome to the John Martin Family Web Site

John Martin is the name of about 12,000 men and boys now living in the United States,1 and even the most cursory genealogical research shows that the name was also very common in earlier centuries.2

John Martin's tombstone

John Martin's tombstone, Oak Ridge Cemetery, Camargo, Illinois. Inscription: J. Martin, Died Feb. 19, 1846, Aged 56 yr., 10 mo., 1 day [This translates to a birth date of 18 April 1789]

 Nevertheless, this site dares to focus on the ancestry and descendants of one particular John Martin, who:

  • was born in Pennsylvania in 1789,
  • married Sarah Stanley in Athens County, Ohio, about 1808,
  • relocated to Camargo, Illinois, about 1837, and
  • died at Camargo in 1846.

Along the way, John and Sarah became the parents of nine children (four girls and five boys):

This web site was launched in October 2005 by Peter L. Martin, a sixth-generation descendant.  It began with just this home page.  Since then, I have added pages for each of John and Sarah's children and for 51 of their 64 grandchildren (of the other 13, 8 died in childhood, and I have simply not found sufficient information for the remaining 5).  I am now (2020) working on pages for the fourth generation.  (This could be quite an undertaking, as John and Sarah had 232 great-grandchildren that we know of, and I may discover others along the way.)  I have also developed pages for the following special topics:

Ancestors of
John Martin		 Ancestors of
Sarah Stanley		 The Letter of
Elza Martin (1899)
 Martin Relatives
in the Civil War

I will be expanding the site as my time and my supply of genealogical information allow.  In the meantime, if you have any questions or can provide any information about this family, you're welcome to contact me at: the address shown in the image below.

—Pete Martin, Lakewood, Colorado

P L Martin C O at G mail dot com.


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1 Statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Martin, the 20th most common surname in the U.S., is held by 0.238% of the population. Thus, out of the 151,745,538 males enumerated in the 2010 census, about 361,000 would have the last name of Martin. The Census Bureau hasn't reported on the relative abundance of first names in the 2010 Census, but the last time they did (in 1990), John was the 2nd most common given name for men (after James) and was held by 3.271% of American males. If that is still valid, some 11,800 of those Martin men and boys would have the first name John. The actual number is probably higher, however, as it seems likely that families having an English surname (like Martin) would use English given names (like John) more than other families. So there could be considerably more "John Martins" in the U.S. than the 12,000 indicated by this simple calculation, and worldwide, there could be double, triple, or quadruple that number.

2 The book Fragments of Martin Family History, by Ivory John Martin and Robert Walter Johnson (compiled and printed 1990 by Robert Eden Martin) includes a lengthy "Note on John Martins in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky" (p. 29–45), which describes several dozen men and boys by this name known to have resided in those three states during the latter part of the 18th century. This book is now posted on line.